Urrrrgh, the first day back at work after a long Christmas holiday. I'd almost forgotten what my alarm clock was for until this morning, and as the radio clicked on at 6 am there was no way I was going to be moved from under the covers. Well, not until this track was played by Jon Hillcock on 6music, standing in for Chris Hawkins. I've since done some investigative work and found Bleached to be a sister double act from Los Angeles. Electric Chair is the b-side to a 7" single 'Searching Through The Past' they put [...]
The Schönbys are fictional, made-up awards for me to let you know what I've enjoyed listening to during 2011. Winners and nominations are drawn from music I have seen, heard or bought during the preceding 12 months. 2010, to me, seemed a poor year for music. When it came to choosing my top albums of the year I struggled to come up with a top 5. Was it a general dearth of good music, or just the fact that having a young baby meant I had other things on my mind? Maybe both these things transpired to cause [...]
The Schönbys are fictional, made-up awards for me to let you know what I've enjoyed listening to during 2011. Winners and nominations are drawn from music I have seen, heard or bought during the preceding 12 months. 2011 has been a great year for the single, so great that I came up with 15 songs for my top 5 singles of the year. It really was difficult to choose, my first attempt at picking my favourite 5 resulted in an all-female line-up. However, I don't want to be accused of sexism like the Sports Personality of [...]
This is a pre-recorded post, so please don't get in touch as I'm not here. So it's Christmas day, and I'm guessing that by now you're sick to your back teeth with The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, The Waitresses and Jona Lewie, so here's one of my favourite 'alternative' Christmas songs, kudos to Billy2Tails for introducing me to this great track. Merry Christmas and a music-filled New Year to all of our listeners! Space Christmas by Shonen Knife
In order for me to attempt to get some use out of my (increasingly) neglected iPod, I tend to put short playlists together of tracks that I'm currently listening to, so that I can turn the radio off on the way to work and enjoy some cool tunes without the banal chat you tend to get in the morning. My commute is less than an hour, so between 10 and 20 tracks does it perfectly. So that I can keep up my promise of at least one post per week, I've decided to post this playlist to keep [...]
The Schönbys are fictional, made-up awards for me to let you know what I've enjoyed listening to during 2011. Winners and nominations are drawn from music I have seen, heard or bought during the preceding 12 months. The next award is for best new artist, but what is a 'new artist'? I can't profess to ever being there at the beginning of any band, so my definition of 'new' is a band, possibly unsigned but not essential, who have released their first official recording in 2011. As I said before, crystal ball gazing is not one of my [...]
I've made my first iTunes purchase with my recently-redeemed voucher that I told you about earlier this month. I made my purchase after dreaming about the song last night. I say dream, what I mean is it was the song going round my head at 3am whilst sat up listening to my young boy babbling to himself. Lonely Boy is the first single from the seventh album released by The Black Keys earlier this month. I would have bought the whole album, but you can't go doing rash things like that this close to Christmas, can you? If [...]
The Schönbys are fictional, made-up awards for me to let you know what I've enjoyed listening to during 2011. Winners and nominations are drawn from music I have seen, heard or bought during the preceding 12 months. The second award is Best International Act. Here's the measily list I had to choose from; gigs from Band of Horses, Warpaint, Phosphorescent and Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, albums from White Denim, The Strokes, Foo Fighters and Airborne Toxic Event, singles from Beastie Boys and Friends. I must admit that I've been fairly non-plussed by the overseas showing [...]
The Schönbys are fictional, made-up awards for me to let you know what I've enjoyed listening to during 2011. Winners and nominations are drawn from music I have seen, heard or bought during the preceding 12 months. The first award is Best Live Act. Here's the list I had to choose from; Goldheart Assembly, Mojave 3, Band of Horses, Oxo Foxo, Laura J Martin, Jonny, Warpaint, Fiction, Metronomy, Yuck, Phosphorescent, Ash, Los Campesinos!, Futureheads, Dananananackroyd, Standard Fare, This Many Boyfriends, Fear of Men, Dutch Uncles, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Ringo Deathstarr and Outfit. Notable commendations [...]
So, the BBC's sounds of 2012 list was released yesterday. I don't understand these lists - they may as well call it the "here's some artists that we know will be releasing material in 2012" list. Conveniently all genres are covered and everyone's happy because there's someone on there that they can root for. Looking at this year's list (naturally) there's not a great deal I know much about. Friends (who I blogged about a few days ago) have made the list, and there's also Dry the River who I've heard of in passing, but the big name in indie [...]
If you hadn't noticed, it's December. The Christmas decorations in our shopping malls are already covered in dust, un-easy silences are developing in offices up and down the country after the annual party, and bloggers and journalists alike begin to think about their end of year lists. I've seen and heard quite a bit of music in 2011 (I set new year's resolutions to make sure I did!) and therefore would like to impart to you the music that has tickled my fancy over the last 12 months, and in order to do that I've devised the Schönbys [...]
Earlier this month I spent 90 minutes of my life trying to access (and subsequently crashing) the Tesco Clubcard website. Why? Well, they had a deal where £12.50 of your hard-earned points could get you a £25 iTunes voucher. I was so excited I bought two, looks like lots of other people had the same idea because the might of the Tesco website was brought to it's knees under the rush to get one of the 25,000 vouchers on offer. I don't generally buy electronic music, I rather opt to buy the physical entity that is a CD [...]
It's taken me (Schönberg) a while to understand blogs. The ones I read are probably read by thousands of people and they're usually telling me something I didn't know. I kinda feel that normally I don't have anything to say that would be useful or interesting to others, so it puts me off posting. Anyway, I now realise that you don't need thousands of followers, if you're getting through to just a few people then the whole experience can be worthwhile. Each January I set myself some musical objectives for the coming [...]
With a name like Band of Skulls and a single called The Devil Takes Care of His Own you can already tell where this band are coming from. Heavy rock from the glory days of BRMC or you could even say a UK version of Kings of Leon with PJ Harvey adding extra vocals. This band are taking no prisoners and I'm looking forward to hearing their second album when it is released at the start of next year. Until I can give you more check out the video for the single...
A while back I mentioned that The Jones were coming back. Well sadly that never materialised by Kris and Kev "Jones" haven't left the industry. They are involved with a bright star who might just go one step further and make it in to our charts. The soul / blues influenced lady named Cocabelle is being co-managed by the former lead singer and guitarist of The Jones as well as them writing for her. I certainly recommend checking our Lion's Den and my apologies go to Kris for not bringing this to your attention sooner. [...]
Artists often find their real calling in the studio and can then move on to a career as a producer but every now and then you hear of a producers finally releasing their own material. It's a weird situation, having slaved away on someone else's material you're finally given a free rein, what do you do? Like a music critic you know your peers will listen closely and may not be too kind. Doctor Rosen Rosen is one such producer turned artist (admittedly not all that famous) and he's giving away his debut EP. Entitled Girls [...]
When I originally posted about The Rassle it was part of a larger post and I'm kinda worried you all missed it. I've been enjoying the tracks off their free EP for a while and if you haven't sat up and taken notice of this band yet then you really should. I won't go over old ground again but what I will point out to you is that they have a new free download available. On first listen it sounds pretty damn good, pretty damn good indeed.
Call The Doctor have a new EP and not only are they playing Bristol but a whole host of other shows including Pen and Quill in Taunton. Wait there's more, there's even a free download to celebrate the release of their EP. We've featured them on here a few times so I'll let you read up on them yourselves but in the meantime you can download their EP here . Oh and here's a full list of their shows: SEPTEMBER RIOTS TOUR ////////////////////////// ////////////////////// [...]
A while back I had a ridiculous idea, I would like to see each band that featured in my Top 25 most played tracks on iTunes. It can't be that hard can it, after all I have already seen White Lies, Elbow, Arctic Monkeys, Coldplay, The Courteeners, The Virgins and some of those appear more than once so it surely it's achievable. Looking further down the list there's Red Light Company, not sure how they made it in the top 25 but I've seen them too. Ah wait, there's Queen and Dire Straits, they might be a bit trickier. [...]
So summer came and went without anyone really noticing and it's time to update you with a few posts. Lets start off with a music festival of a different kind. Catfest was a great event held to celebrate the thirtieth birhtday of Cat, wife of 3WTM's (very) occasional contributor and good friend Dancing Bear. Tickets were distributed, wrist bands worn (it is Dancing Bears arm modelling the wrist band below, he is an actual bear) and tents erected for this event in Wales. The idea was we'd all turn up in her Mum and Dad's garden (they own an [...]
What's Wrong With The Mainstream
Avicii – Two Million
Beck – I Just Started Hating Some People Today
iamamiwhoami: kin - Teaser
